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May 1, 2025

The power of flow

Throughput #9

Better flow equals lower costs and better results.

Your business is a system, and profitability depends on one thing: 

The smooth, efficient “flow” of work through the system.

To achieve optimal flow, you need to identify and manage bottlenecks (constraints) that hinder the flow of work (value creation).

Makes sense, right? But it can be complicated in practice.

So, 25 years ago, we developed a framework to help manufacturing organizations increase “flow” for more revenue and profitability.

The Flow Management System: 25 years of results

At the suggestion of one of our clients, we named this business operations framework and continuous improvement process the Flow Management System (FMS). 

FMS is based on Theory of Constraints (TOC) and Throughput Economics (TE) principles.

The strategic decision making tool is TE; the tactical operational applications are the core of TOC. 

Together they prevent the negative impact of variability (supply chain, manufacturing operation and customer demand) on plant flow and resulting throughput.

FMS has four key, integrated components:

  1. Demand-Driven Replenishment inventory management (define inventory position and levels and create a pull-based replenishment signal)
  2. Drum-Buffer-Rope production management (identify production streams,
    schedule only key resources and reinforce schedule attainment as the primary measure)
  3. Continuous Improvement based on Flow Issue Reporting (FIR) results. This drives a plant-wide continuous improvement process based on the main reasons the schedule is not achieved.
  4. Once the plant is stable, begin measuring product profitability using TE principles like Throughput Velocity and Overall Throughput generation for better sales, marketing and business investment (CAPEX) decisions.

In order to ensure sustainability and speed of implementation, we developed our proprietary Roadrunner software, which enables the FMS framework.

Today, the Roadrunner software suite is used to manage each of the FMS components above for a complete Flow Management System. 

Better flow = lower costs = better results.

We’re exceptionally grateful to celebrate 25 years of helping organizations achieve flow to reach their business goals (check out these highlights of our work!).

Thanks for reading!

— Jack Warchalowski, Montera CEO
[email protected]
Connect with me on LinkedIn

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